Israel Pledges Revenge For Attacks It Blames Palestinians As Tension With Syria Increases

December 28, 1985|By Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government, expressing shock and outrage Friday over the terrorist attacks at airports in Rome and Vienna, vowed reprisals against the Palestinians, who they charge were responsible.

The Israeli reaction came at a time when the country is involved in a tense new military confrontation with Syria, involving deployment by Damascus of surface-to-air missiles in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and along the Syrian- Lebanese frontier.

Israel sees Syria as a major supporter of Palestinian terrorism, raising concern that an Israeli retaliation for Friday's attacks could lead to a clash with its most powerful Arab antagonist.

''I can tell you only one thing: We are going to react,'' said a government source. ''I don't know where, I don't know when, I don't know how. But we will not let it go unpunished.''

Israel's most recent retaliation for a terrorist attack was Oct. 1, when its warplanes bombed Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters on the outskirts of Tunis, Tunisia, killing at least 73 people. The raid was in response to the murder of three Israeli yachtsmen six days earlier in Larnaca, Cyprus.

''Generally speaking, our policy is not so much to make reprisals but to wage a war on terrorism,'' said a Foreign Ministry official. ''And we have always made that point -- that we cannot just sit by passively in the face of terrorism. Especially we try to take deterrent action to prevent further terrorism. It's not just a simple tit-for-tat affair -- it's more than that.'' Calling Friday's attacks a ''shocking slaughter,'' Peres pledged to defend Israeli citizens at home and abroad.

While saying that they still had insufficient information Friday night to identify those responsible for the attacks, several Israeli officials blamed the Palestinians.

The attacks should ''remind anyone who has either forgotten or ignored the fact that the Palestinian terrorist organizations have not quit and are trying to reach us and harm us wherever they can,'' said Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement on the attacks called ''on all countries which give shelter and support to the PLO to immediately expel all representatives of that organization.''

The PLO denied that the organization was involved and condemned the attacks.